Readers’ forum: Dividend income errors in HNW client’s return

One of my high net worth clients has just been through an HMRC investigation. He received a clean bill of health on everything except dividend income. He has a large investment portfolio which is not managed by a broker so each year one of my staff has to work though all of the dividend paperwork to produce a schedule which is used in the tax return.

HMRC has flagged two errors in the schedule: 1) one dividend out of a total of 30 was missed out – the client appears to have mislaid the relevant papers; 2) there is a transposition error on our spreadsheet where a dividend of £8 300 was keyed in as £3 800. The combined tax effect of these two errors amounts to about £6 000 of additional tax (a small amount in proportion to the client’s total tax liability for the year of over £150...